United Nations, New York, USA, October 05 2015 – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon gives his remarks at a high-level discussion on “Public Spaces for All”, organized by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN Habitat) as part of this year’s World Habitat Day celebration.World Habitat Day is observed every year on the first Monday of October and this year’s theme aims to emphasize the importance of public spaces in communities and as a way for social and cultural interaction.Credit: Luiz Rampelotto/EuropaNewswire

United Nations, October 05 2015:

Marking World Habitat Day, which is observed every year on the first Monday of October, top United Nations officials today urged the creation of “Public spaces for all.”

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that in recent years the development discourse “has increasingly recognized the role of urbanization in achieving sustainability.”

The 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), he said, “reflect an international consensus that sustainable urbanization can play a transformational role.”

This is most clearly reflected in goal eleven, to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.”

United Nations, New York, USA, October 05 2015 – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon gives his remarks at a high-level discussion on “Public Spaces for All”, organized by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN Habitat) as part of this year’s World Habitat Day celebration.World Habitat Day is observed every year on the first Monday of October and this year’s theme aims to emphasize the importance of public spaces in communities and as a way for social and cultural interaction.Credit: Luiz Rampelotto/EuropaNewswire

The Secretary-General also highlighted the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly goal 11, which aims to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.”

General Assembly President Mogens Lykketoft noted that ” today more than 3.5 billion people live in urban areas” and by 2030, “by the time we reach the deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals, that number will have risen to at least five billion people, and the majority of that growth will be in developing countries.”

The Executive Director of the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) Joan Clos, noting the importance of the day’s theme, said “we should all ensure that in the framework of the transforming our world, the 2030 development agenda, especially sustainable development goal eleven which formulates the ambition to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable, we reflect on the need that planned and managed public spaces is essential.”

He added that “the new urban agenda to be defined in HABITAT III in Quito, next year in October, will provide the unique opportunity to implement the 2030 development framework and deal with the challenges of urbanization in the next two decades.”

World Habitat Day is being celebrated this year with a partnership between UN-Habitat and the ‘HeforShe’ initiative promoted by the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women). The two UN agencies are aiming to promote the role of men and women in the creation of gender-equal public spaces for all.

Categories

Europa Newswire

Established in September of 2004, Europa Newswire specializes in UN editorial images.
Europa Newswire holds one of the largest image libraries of The United Nations’s political events, in private hands.

Images include security council meetings, the General Assembly debates, Goodwill Ambassadors Appointments, and Secretary General high-level meetings.